Good Samaritan who intervened in attempted assault lucky to be alive after being run over

Matthew Covington awakened in an ambulance, flat on his back, his crunched cellphone resting on his chest. He had no idea what had happened. Was it a crash? Had he been shot?

As the El Segundo High School graduate made his way toward a hospital, bleeding and with a open wound on the top of his head that exposed his brain, the 22-year-old was lucky to be alive.

A man had run Covington down with his car, then drove over him early Saturday, when Covington intervened in what appeared to be an assault against a woman on a Hawthorne street.

"The last thing I remember was seeing the car near me and I did a little jump," Covington said Wednesday. "I did jump just a little. That's all I remember. "

Covington survived with two broken ribs, stitches above his eye and mouth and on his scalp, road rash over his knees, arms and face, and a tire track across his stomach.

Covington, a Westwood resident, parked his car Friday night next to Hollyglen Park, where he and his friends often meet and leave their vehicles before heading out. Friday night, they went to a party.

At 2 a.m. Saturday, they were stopped in the 13600 block of Hindry Avenue, waiting for another friend to arrive, when they heard noise coming from another car behind them.

"I looked back," Covington said. "I vividly saw the guy hit the woman in the face like he was pushing her, like he was trying to push her in the vehicle. My first thought was he was trying to abduct her. "

Covington, a former high school wrestler, got out of his car, walked over and asked, "Is everything all right here? "

"The guy became very skittish," Covington recalled. "He didn't leave the side of his car. He was hiding behind his car door the whole time. He told me, 'This is none of your business. Get the f--- out of here.' "

The woman then surprised Covington, also cussing at him and telling him to leave.

Realizing the woman did not want help, Covington remarked that it was not his problem if she wanted to be beaten and began backing away. But things did not stop there.

The man and woman got into their car and pulled away.

"He accelerated right at me," Covington said. "I dodged out of the way, like jumped to the left a little and didn't think anything of it. He kept going down the street. "

Covington then noticed the driver make a U-turn.

"I saw him coming back," he recalled. "I was like, 'What are the chances this dude is going to try to hit me with this car?' "

Police said the driver struck Covington, launching him onto the windshield and carrying him on the car hood for about 150 feet before he slid off into the street. Covington said they estimate the driver was going 40 to 50 mph.

The impact knocked Covington out. He awakened in the ambulance.

"I kept asking, 'What happened? I was kind of distraught at the time," he said. "All I remember is trying to get back to my car. I kept asking, 'Was I driving? Did I get shot? What happened? Are my friends OK?' They told me, 'You got hit' and then my memory came back. I remembered trying to save the girl and the car coming at me. "

He passed out again and awakened in the hospital emergency room. Covington spent two nights in the hospital and is recovering at his mother's Playa Vista apartment.

Covington said it will take him six weeks to mend and, after a week off from school and another week of spring break, he expects to return to classes at Santa Monica College. He plans to attend California State University, Long Beach, and aspires to be a sports agent.

Friends visiting him Wednesday said they heard the story and were shocked to see his bloodied and scraped face. Samba Idol, 22, of El Segundo sat listening to his friend describe his ordeal with a look of amazement on his face.

"He's a freaking beast," Idol said. "He's a champion, for sure. "

Hawthorne police Lt. Scott Swain said detectives recovered a front grill and other car parts in the street that belong to a 1999-2000 Ford Crown Victoria fleet vehicle. Because it was an aqua or green color, detectives suspect it was a retired taxicab and it might have had faded taxi markings on its doors.

Police asked anyone with information about the car to call Detective The Vu at 310-349-2844.

Covington, who once jumped into action when he saw a man rob another person of a cellphone near UCLA, chasing him down and grabbing him in a headlock until police arrived, said he was glad he stepped in on Saturday, despite what happened to him.

"It's better that I was left with this than left with my conscience of what happened to that female," he said. "Even though I am injured and now I am all battered up, I would have felt a lot worse if I was all right and ended up reading about some female getting beaten up and murdered. I would have felt a lot worse about that than I do now. "

Next time, however, Covington said he will call 911 first. And he can only wonder about the man who struck him and what he might say to him if they ever meet again.

"I would ask him like why is he so cowardly to not confront me with words, but to confront me by hitting me with his car," Covington said. "That's like the most cowardly way out of it. To the female, it's like, 'Why would you let this happen to you?' "